As a financial adviser I always told my clients diversification was a wise policy. In the spirit of diversification I’ve teamed up with my good friend Gil Gevins from Puerto Vallarta to provide some spice to my enchiladas. I’ll be posting a few of his pieces that he puts in the PV Mirror. He’s very funny. I have ALL of his books, the three anthologies of his articles and his novel of breathtaking intrigue Slime and Punishment. At the bottom you will find out more about him and where you can buy his books which Think in the Morning highly recommends.
A CHICKEN IS A CHICKEN IS A CHICKEN
By Gil Gevins
In January I was forced to endure the existential mind- numbing horror of living without my computer for almost three days.
The mornings were the worst. Mornings are when I write, and writing is of vital importance to my (pardon the expression) mental health. If I don’t write, all the refuse tumbling about inside my brain just sits there, putrefying (like a deceased bass on the beach), instead of draining sanitarily (like recycled sewage) out onto the computer screen, where it might disturb the thought processes of an impressionable republican, but can no longer bother me.
On my third morning without a computer, I went into shock. Lucy found me sitting in the kitchen staring glassy-eyed into the abyss. Actually, it was a bowl of oatmeal. But it felt like the abyss. Lucy was adamant: I needed to do something, to distract myself from the horror movie running at breakneck speed through the smoldering hissing circuits of my cluttered cranial cavity.
I put on some running shoes and set off for the malecon. A brisk walk along the ocean would surely calm my nerves.
Naturally, I was wrong. The longer I walked, the more I felt the urgent need to get something (anything!) off my chest. Then I ran into a group of tourists standing around in a confused clump in front of a bronze statue of Maria Musculosa, the first Mexican woman to win a gold medal in the shot-put.
Unbelievably, I heard myself ask the assembled gaggle of gawking gringos if I could be of assistance.
(Yes, by this time I was pretty far gone.)
“We’re here for the free tour of the malecon,” a Canadian gentleman with a large straw hat said. “Are you the guide?”
“Is The Donald orange?” I replied.
“You’re a little early,” the man pointed out.
“So are you,” I said. “All right, let’s get this cattle-call on the road.”
And off I strode, hooffing it south down the malecon, with the dozen tourists scurrying to keep up.
“Aren’t you going to tell us about the symbolism of the rocks?” a woman asked, all out of breath.
“Yes!” I said, screeching to a halt. “Everybody gather round and take a careful look at these rocks here which appear to have been arranged in the form of a dark gray chicken.”
Everyone dutifully gathered about the design laid out in the concrete of the walkway.
“Oooh! Oooh!” a woman with a frightening sunburn cried. “I can see it! I can see the chicken!”
“Looks more like a turkey,” the man with the straw hat remarked.
After waiting a beat to build the suspense, I said, “You’re both wrong! This is an ancient Toltecenstein design, representing the mythical half-chicken/half-man god of poultry, Quetzahualcoyotlberg.”
“It looks just like a chicken!” the same woman said.
“That’s because it is a chicken,” I informed her, “in a symbolic, mythological, paleo-erotic sense.”
“Paleo-erotic?” someone asked.
“Yes,” I explained, “having sex with a chicken was part of the Toltecenstein male fertility rites. But let’s turn our attention now to this next design, which so reminds us of an ordinary octopus.”
“You’re right!” the woman with the severe sunburn screeched. “It looks just like an octopus!”
“How would you know?” her husband sneered. “The only time you’ve seen an octopus is in pieces on a plate.”
“That’s not true,” she said, “I saw one once on Animal Planet.”
“That was a giant squid!”
“What’s the difference. They both have all those bumpy arms and…”
“Excuse me,” I broke in, “can I say something, please? I mean, I am the one giving the tour here. Now, let’s forget Animal Planet and take focus all of our attention on this symbolic octopus.”
“Is it also a Toltecenstein design?” the man in the straw hat, who must have had a fabulous memory, asked.
“No, this one,” I explained, “is an Aztecenheimer symbol. The Aztecenheimers were a warlike tribe who consumed their own…”
“Excuse me,” the crimson woman interrupted, “were the Aztecenheimers related to the Aztecs?”
“Of course! The Aztecenheimers were an obscure branch of the larger Aztec nation. They lived primarily in trees, where they subsisted on potato pancakes and chicken mole. Their first Emperor, Monte-zumba was born with eight arms, earning him the nickname: Netzahualcoyoctomom which, roughly translated, means, Octopus-Man-God-Whatever.”
“Were all eight of his arms functional?” she asked.
“We don’t know for certain,” I sighed, “however, there is a general consensus that at least one of them must have worked, or else how could he have brushed his teeth. The Aztecenheimers, it appears, were obsessed with dental hygiene. Again, no one is certain why. Now, let’s turn our attention to the next…”
“But what does the octopus symbolize,” the sunburned woman (who actually appeared to be on fire) asked.
“Unlike our first rock design,” I patiently explained, “this specimen does not symbolize a chicken. Any more questions? For example, would anyone like to know what kind of rocks were used to create the rock drawings?”
“Yes,” the straw-hatted man said, “I would.”
“It is,” I explained, “a sedentary rock, which is only found in the rain forests of Chiapas, where it has been quarried for centuries by the Los Angeles Lakerdonian Indians, who, by the way, were the first tribe to cultivate guacamole, and who are also credited with inventing the game of basketball.”
“Excuse me,” a man wearing a University of Kansas t-shirt said, “James Naismith invented basketball, and he was no Lickerdonian. He was a red-blooded American Jayhawker from Kansas. Not some Mexican in a jungle someplace.”
“Sadly, sir, you are wrong on both counts. Naismith was a Canadian who was deported to Kansas; and Jayhawkers were skinny birds with yellow feet who were made extinct by the Ozenthal Indians of Upper Wichita, who prized the rubbery yellow extremities because they made such wonderful doorstops. Also known as ‘teepee birds’…”
Gil Gevins is the author of four hilarious books, including the cult-classic, PUERTO VALLARTA ON 49 BRAIN CELLS A DAY, and his latest and greatest, SLIME AND PUNISHMENT. Signed copies of all Gil’s books are available at his wife’s wonderful shop, LUCY’S CUCU CABAÑA, located at 295 Basilio Badillo. Or as E-books on Amazon.
Be sure to read Think in the Morning’s post by clicking on the link here LUCY’S CUCU CABAÑA